Investigations on Supercharging and Turbo-Compounding of a Single Cylinder Diesel Engine
2022-01-0512
03/29/2022
- Event
- Content
- Despite the advantages of turbocharging in improved engine performance and reduced exhaust emissions, single-cylinder engines remain naturally aspirated (NA) and are not generally turbocharged. This is due to the shortcomings with pulsated and intermittent exhaust gas flow into the turbine and the phase lag between the intake and exhaust stroke. In the present study, experimental investigations are initially carried out with a suitable turbocharger closely coupled to a single-cylinder diesel engine. Results indicated that the engine power dropped significantly by 40% for the turbocharged engine compared to the NA version even though the mass flow rate of air was increased by 1.4 times with turbocharging. A novel approach of decoupling the turbine and the compressor and coupling them separately to the engine is proposed to address these limitations. Also, an impulse turbine is chosen for this application, better suited to extract energy during the pulsated exhaust flow. Commercially available AVL Boost software was used to carry out the simulation studies to understand the overall engine performance improvement of this novel approach compared to the base naturally aspirated engine. Different nozzle area ratios were analysed to estimate the kinetic energy available at the nozzle exit. An optimum nozzle area ratio of 1:2 for the impulse turbine was arrived, which provided better net engine performance. The net effect of supercharged and turbo-compounded engine results in an improved performance with 42% higher brake power output and 2% higher brake thermal efficiency at the rated power conditions. Thus, the present approach reaped the benefits of charging the single-cylinder diesel engine, which was otherwise impossible by the conventional turbocharging method
- Citation
- Ramkumar, J., Krishnasamy, A., and Ramesh, A., "Investigations on Supercharging and Turbo-Compounding of a Single Cylinder Diesel Engine," SAE Technical Paper 2022-01-0512, 2022, .